. . .writings from Wilmington.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

It's hard to resist TWO cuties in their jammies.Ella will be 4 months old tomorrow. She is WAY bigger than Lily was at this age (length & weight). Right now she is wearing 6 month (Thanksgiving) jammies. We have her 4 month checkup on Tuesday. I can't wait to see how much she weighs & how long she is. She is going to be a tall one.

Here is Lily at 5 1/2 months (Thanksgiving 2010):Here are a few more pictures of Ella. She is such a sweet & happy baby.

Monday, September 24, 2012

We just have to share how GREAT our God is & how He is blessing us immensely! We don't deserve it, but we are thankful & humbled.

Let's back up a little bit (two months to be exact)....

I was planning on returning back to work (I work 30 hours a week from home) after Ella's birth. Jake & I had been praying about what God would have for our family. We had decided that I should return to work, but we would reevaluate if it just was too much with my working from home & having both the girls too. My maternity leave was up after my sister's wedding. I went into work for a meeting & was told that they no longer had work for me. The business had slowed down & I was being laid off. This was a blessing! We had prayed for clear direction from the Lord & being laid off was definitely clear direction. So I became a full time stay-at-home-mom. My dream job! I love it!

Now we are on one income. Jake & I had both talked & decided that if at some point we had to sell our current home, we would. We feel that it is so important that I am home with the girls while they are little. It's only a short time until they will be in school & we want that time with them.

Now fast forward to last Saturday night - September 15, 2012

To clarify, we have not been looking for other housing. Jake just likes to check Zillow periodically. Well, Saturday night he found a foreclosure very close to us that was priced at almost 1/3 of the cost. Sunday afternoon Jake told me that he found a house he wanted to buy. I said okay! Sunday night we went & snooped around the property (it is vacant). On Monday, the house moved from being listed to a bidding site. Also on Monday Jake worked on getting in touch with our realtor & our mortage guy - we used both of them to buy our current home. We didn't have current email addresses for them so Jake got a hold of them Tuesday from their cell numbers. We met our realtor Wednesday night (9/19) at the house. It is a BIG fixer-upper, but we "loved" it. It is listed as 3 bedrooms, 3 full baths, 2 half baths, sunken den, sunroom, rec room. It is 2,400 sq. ft. which is a lot bigger than our current home. We talked & prayed a lot Wednesday night. Jake continued to get finances nailed down with our mortgage guy. We placed a bid on the house on Friday afternoon. Friday evening the bidding site changed status to "accepting the Highest & Best Offers." Bidding closed Saturday (9/22) at 3:31pm. We talked about it & decided to up our bid $5,000. We really didn't want to lose this house over a couple thousand dollars. On Saturday we found out that we WON the bid! So exciting. God really gave us this house. Jake found it & in one week God gave it to us. It will substantially decrease our house payment & give us more space.

And here is floor plan I drew up of the house. You'll have to click on it to enlarge the image. This is how the house sits now...we will be changing A LOT of this. I had to guess on dimensions, but I think that this is fairly accurate.

There will be ONE item on each of our Christmas lists this year: LOWES Gift Cards

Here are a few things we are praying about:

Our current house will sell quickly & for the right price.

All the inspections will go smoothly at the "new" house & that there will be no big issues (besides the ones we are already well aware of).

We will be able to do the necessary remodeling (painting, flooring, gutting the kitchen, etc...) quickly & prior to moving in.

Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.